Armidale Community Buddhist Centre

...by respecting and serving your teachers you exhaust karma whose effects you would otherwise experience in the miserable realms. Your action of serving the teacher expends these miserable effects and replaces them with only slight harm to your body and mind in this lifetime, either in actuality or in dreams. In addition, the benefits of respecting and serving your teachers are tremendous, such as a collection of virtue which surpasses even the roots of virtue that you derive from making offerings to limitless buddhas, and so forth. As the Sutra of Ksitigarbha says:

"Those whom the teachers care for will purify the karma that would otherwise cause them to wander through the miserable realms for ten million limitless eons. They purify this karma with harm to their bodies and minds in this lifetime. This harm includes sickness such as an infectious disease with fever and calamities such as famine. They may purify their karma by merely undergoing something as little as a dream or a scolding. They produce more roots of virtue in one morning than those who give gifts to, worship, or observe precepts from limitless tens of millions of buddhas. Those who respect and serve their gurus are endowed with unimaginable good qualities."